Quote:
Originally Posted by microbet
I don't know him, but he'd have to be uncredibly super awesome for it to not be completely stupid. The Dems running a Kennedy would be almost as bad as running a Clinton.
I disagree. My mom typically leans right, but hates Trump. She'd be considered part of the religious right, but she didn't like the way he spoke of women. She loved JFK, though, and speaks fondly of him whenever he comes up... I think she'd like Joe Kennedy, and I'd imagine a lot of people who were teenagers and young adults when JFK won would have fond memories of him and be predisposed to like Joe Kennedy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DVaut1
I understand and appreciate the cynical take but there are theoretical limits to gerrymandering. The 2020 Census is also going to erode the Presidential electoral power of the Rust Belt states full of whites the GOP is now ascendant in, and give more electoral power to the southwest and Sun Belt states where the Democrats are more competitive. GOP is still also in demographic death -- they are reliant on a bunch of older voters and not doing much to win over people born after 1965. Effects of the 2020 Census won't be seen in 2020 election but the point remains.
It's a complicated picture. Some dourness is appropriate. "Irrelevancy for decades" is a hottake. The GOP has some pretty deep problems here and their redistricting tricks can't fade the deeper problems with racial minorities and younger voters. That's what the voter suppression schemes are for. But to bet on their long term durability is tricky too.
tl;dr summary: state races are critical, gerrymandering effects are real, GOP can't truly institute minority rule with just gerrymandering but with more systemic changes and other failures (e.g., voter suppression, collapse of judicial independence, lack of a left response).
Regarding the bolded - that may be true if there is a fair and accurate 2020 Census. But, as one example, Texas has thus far grown twice as fast as the country overall since 2010, while New York has barely grown. Losing an electoral vote or two in New York, while 3-4 go to Texas, is very possible.
Making it worse, to summarize the article linked, Republicans are trying to block the use of predictive data/modeling and underfund the Census so it relies mostly on direct mail response and voluntary online submissions. These methods undersample minorities, and in conjunction with putting the fear of God into immigrants through ICE, Latinos are more likely to try to duck the Census.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...o-fail-w492666
Anecdotally, I dated a girl who worked on the 2010 Census, and she said minorities were more likely to try to avoid being counted because they didn't trust the government...
Basically, the demographic trends favor the left overall, but the right has the power and can use Census tricks, voter suppression and gerrymandering to hold it.